Since 1982, there have been only 15 documentaries that have opened on more than 1,000 screens. And the vast majority of them were DisneyNature docs or music documentaries like Michael Jackson’s This Is It or Justin Bieber:Never Say Never. Before yesterday, the only three exceptions were Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (1,052 in 2008), Believe (1,037 theaters in 2013) and Death of a Nation (1,005 theaters in 2018). Up until today, none of those three opened with more than $3 million on their respective opening weekends and none made it past $7.7m. So, in that sense, it’s no surprise that Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 11/9 tanked, relatively speaking, in its whopping 1,719 theater wide release debut.

To be fair, Briarcliff Entertainment had to know that this isn’t 2004 and that the lightning-in-a-bottle variables that turned Fahrenheit 9/11 into a box office juggernaut just weren’t there. That anti-Bush documentary opened right as Michael Moore was becoming a household name thanks to his Oscar-winning Bowling for Columbine and his fiery Oscar acceptance speech. And it became a lightning rod for controversy after then-Disney-owned Miramax dropped it like a hot potato only for relative newbie Lionsgate to sweep it up just as they had with Dogma five years prior. Cue a jaw-dropping $23.9 million debut in just 868 theaters in June of 2004, still a record for an under-1,000-theater release.

It earned $119 million domestic and $222m worldwide, by far the biggest for any kind of conventional documentary film. But 14-years later, folks are even less likely to flock to an openly political documentary, and frankly, even those on the left don’t necessarily want to pay to see a 125-minute crash course of the current horrors of the day. I’d gladly pay triple the ticket price to see a version of the movie without you-know-who babbling incoherently. I’d argue that Moore’s motives in making the movie were less about spreading the word through its contents than in using the film’s publicity tour to get the word out on the various news/media outlets.

That explains the wide release, which got the message out to the few folks who showed up, as opposed to mostly being concentrated in major cities for the first week or three before a wider expansion. Michael Moore is still a big believer in seeing documentaries on the big screen, which is arguably why this one didn't go to VOD. Truth be told, I would not be surprised to see this flick make a transition to VOD at lightning speed, presumably before the November midterms. But in terms of theatrical revenue over its opening weekend, it's something of a whiff.

It earned $3 million for the weekend for a miserable $1,804 per-theater average. Although it’ll outgross Where to Invade Next ($3.9m in 2015/2016) and thus become Moore’s biggest-grossing doc since Capitalism: A Love Story ($14.3m) back in September of 2009. It doesn’t mean anything for the political left any more than the under-$6m performance of Dinesh D'Souza’s Death of a Nation ($5.87m) means anything for the political right. Neither has much of a chance of changing any hearts and minds. Fahrenheit 11/9 a relic of a time when we thought that movies could actually make a difference.

Amazon’s Life Itself earned $2.16 million in 2,609 theaters over its debut weekend. That gives Dan Fogelman’s poorly-reviewed melodrama a lousy $809 per-theater average. The This is Us director initially tried to blame white male critics for the film’s poor reviews, apparently oblivious (or indifferent) to the fact that all demographics hated it. No matter, if you want to see this Oscar Isaac/Olivia Wilde weepy in theaters as opposed to Amazon Prime, you better do it quickly. Otherwise, this $10m acquisition is a classic case of “why pay to see in theaters what you can see on TV for free?”

However, as someone who actually likes Collateral Beauty and The Book of Henry, I may have to check it out. Come what may, I'd rather indulge in an occasional over-the-top star-driven studio programmer than pretend to be super-duper excited for Space Jam 2 or Terminator 3 version 4.

The other major wide opener was Neon’s Assassination Nation. The film was aiming for a targeted semi-wide release akin to BH Tilt’s horror offerings, but even those need an over/under $4 million debut weekend to qualify as a win. Sam Levinson’s action comedy about four teen girls who find themselves in peril after someone leak’s their entire town’s smartphone and email content, is just good enough to make me wish it were good. It has a lot on its mind, but it’s too distracted in the need to be “edgy, in a conformist sort of way” to actually tell its story. So cue a $1.028m opening weekend and a lousy $733 per-theater-average for the disappointing screed.

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I've studied the film industry, both academically and informally, and with an emphasis in box office analysis, for 28 years. I have extensively written about all of said subjects for the last ten years. My outlets for film criticism, box office commentary, and film-skewing ...